


Our Phantom Hearts

by dread_thehalfhanded



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Discussion of Power Imbalance, Dream Sex, M/M, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Overthinking, Visions, Visions in dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 00:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dread_thehalfhanded/pseuds/dread_thehalfhanded
Summary: "Premonitions… Premonitions… deep questions they are. Sense the future, once all Jedi could; now few alone have the skill. Visions… gifts from the Force, and curses." ―YodaOr: Obi-Wan has one (1) weird sex dream and can't handle it.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 9
Kudos: 92





	Our Phantom Hearts

The Force was with him.

It was the air, the water, the earth, the faint sound of dust orbiting a galaxy away. It was the pulse of blood in his fingertips, the never-ceasing song of the moons of Perimako Major, the wide fins of the Rugosa natives, veined with light.

A nameless man—for we are nothing outside of the Force—knelt in a meditation chamber in the heart of the light. And he joined himself to the Force: And he and the Force were one.

He saw it, in his mind’s eye, as the Force surrounded him, wrapping him in a golden wave of light-beyond-light. A white cocoon, layers and layers of Force folding in on themselves like centuries, at the heart of the light. The pale sphere was—well, it was everything. A millennia of life forms folded into a second of being, folded into a space infinitesimally small, blooming fair in the cells of every creature in the galaxy.

 _Even the foul ones?_ The question rose in him without words.

The answer came as familiar to him as the last time, and the time before that—the white blossom of light shifted and grew, multiplying over on itself until it formed the bulbous head and engorged body of a Hutt. Yet there too shone the light, in every cell, in every note of that heinous creature’s being.

The man shifted. Great indeed were the mysteries revealed through the Force. His eyes did not open, but the barest twitch of his short beard betrayed his smile.

If told that the Force had a sense of humor, Obi-Wan would believe it.

Letting the moment go, he sank back into the light, and for a long time saw nothing, felt nothing as himself. He rode the skies, briefly, as a bird far overhead of the temple—a stodgy mutated pigeon, the scourge of Coruscant, looking for a mate. He felt the students at their fencing lessons, their small minds alight with joy—and for a moment, joy flickered in him too, in recognition. He remembered those days.

Finally, after a long while, the Force fell into a steady hum, and Obi-Wan with it. He relaxed into the wash of light further, and still further, and then—

\---

He woke to a heated darkness, the smell of sweat and twisting flesh. For a long moment, he could feel nothing, hear nothing, only smell a familiar scent, hear the pound of his own heart. Fear flickered through him, far-off and distant—but how could he be afraid when _he_ was here?

Closing his eyes, he relaxed into it. A vision. What would he see, here in the dark of his own mind? Several thoughts flittered across his mind—we shall see, Master Windu, if our world really will end in flame—but they passed quickly. He was one with the Force.

And the Force was with him.

He heard his own voice cry out—but not in pain. Startled, he opened his eyes to the dark, and the black veil of utter void around him burst into shadows of every shade. Greys, blues, garnet, and black all shifted treacherously before him, forming shapes and faces known and unknown; impossible to tell where one ended and another began.

In the shifting dark, he reached out for something to guide him, and his hands closed on warm flesh. 

“Are you all right?” came the familiar voice, but close, so close he could feel hot breath on his ear.

At that voice, the colors shifted, and swam, and suddenly burst to life in a single image—Anakin, Anakin here and safe and _home_ —and he could feel, too, and suddenly every limb flooded with sensation and he felt so full of it.

A gasping groan left him, he felt a strange pleasure-twist of his guts, and he heard someone answer in his voice:

“Yes, Anakin, I _want_ —"

Warm, hot lips crashed against his own, and he was devoured, demolished, consumed. Heat rolled through him, and he opened his mouth to Anakin’s kisses, felt Anakin’s arms around him and the chill of a cybernetic hand wrapped up in the nest of his hair. The metal, cool against his skin, grounded him, and he leaned into it, the slight pain amidst all this else.

There was some reason, he thought absently, with Anakin’s hungry tongue in his mouth and his own hand bruising on Anakin’s hip, that they should not be doing this. Some reason. He chased it around in his cobwebby head even as Anakin shoved him against a wall—fucked up into him—bit him purple and blue, until tears streamed down his cheeks—

“Don’t tell me you’re done already, Master?”

Some reason. There it is, that reason. And suddenly, he was the third person in the room.

Cheeks hot with shame, and something else, now he watched through distant, disembodied eyes, as Anakin fucked him on his own bed in the Temple quarters. He watched himself on his knees, unable to look away as his pink face was shoved into the pillow, as he leaked onto his discarded Jedi robes so carefully maintained. Anakin was buried in him, setting a brutal and punishing pace or a lazy and half-hearted one by turns as he fucked him—no.

No, he realized with some horror. Anakin was not fucking him. Anakin was _making love_ to him.

They’d done this before.

\---

Obi-Wan Kenobi opened his eyes to the wide white light of mid-morning streaming through the windows of the meditation chamber. For a long moment he did not move, barely took a breath, even withdrew nearly from the Force.

Sweat had beaded on his forehead, and he had to consciously unclench his fists.

His first real, conscious thought: I can tell no one of this.

His second: I am a horrible Jedi.

His third: Oh, Kriff.

\---

Contrary to popular assumption, Jedi are not strangers to love. Relationships are not uncommon among the Order, although all are publicly frowned upon. The Council appeared to hold a policy of “well, we are all young and horny once,” and as long as no harm is done, turn a blind eye. Perhaps this is for the best, these exceptions to the rules, as there might be significantly fewer Jedi if not. And so, it is not uncommon to feel the excitement of a pair of young padawans at each other, feel their pleasure in the Force with one another, and watch them pass into Knighthood unscathed and perhaps wiser for the experience. And, it is often noted among the wise: No lasting commitments come out of these liaisons.

Publicly, that is.

Obi-Wan, well aware of these exceptions, hovered disconsolately on the roof of the Jedi temple and stared out at the night. He’d spent the rest of his day avoiding those he knew well, removed from the Force, and hiding in the library trying, and failing, to read a book about Midi-chlorians in deep sea creatures on various worlds.

The knowledge that exceptions were made for children did not comfort him. He doubted any exception would cover a man with such a perverse predilection for his own apprentice. Never mind that said apprentice was a man grown, and no longer his responsibility—the thought alone was unconscionable.

He shook his head. Finally alone, and with the smoggy Coruscant wind whipping his cheeks, he tried to relax himself just a little bit, to move on. To slip back into the Force here, where he might not fear what it would show him. If he—if he slipped, no one would feel him. Feel his fear, his shame, his—

No. He shook his head, withdrawing again. He was… afraid.

For all the fear that wracked his once-padawan, Obi-Wan has historically feared very little, in the strictest sense of the word. He has known worry, yes—what good man does not?—but he has made his peace with death, with loss, with grief. His master, his love, his lost childhood. He has faced the worst of himself, on Naboo, on Geonosis, on countless other planets, and struck it down.

It’s not that he feels no fear. He’s simply accustomed to it.

This. This is not fear.

Nor is it simply desire— _I know what that feels like_ , he thought, a little ruefully. Satine dwelt ever in the small shrine he’d built for her in his heart. But that, that feeling was not pain. Nor fear, not like this. He’d loved her, yes, he could admit that. But that attachment has become—pure. Crystalized, untouchable and painless, a silent silver memory of something so wholly above him that it was blessing enough to brush it with his fingertips.

This is different.

This makes him flush all kinds of hot, shame and desire co-mingled into an unholy cocktail that goes straight to— Well. Parts of him it shouldn’t.

He shook his head again, against the images that threatened to cloud over and obscure his tenuous grasp on the real and pressing world around him. The world which had no business in it for any creature so possessed with _that_. He could not even bring himself to name it.

While very fixed on not imagining anything, he missed the short tap-tap-tap of a wooden stick behind him, nor the curious hum of a much smaller being. Withdrawn from the Force as he was, the small voice behind him took him by surprise.

“In pain you are, Master Kenobi.”

He started, shame-faced, and clenched his fists into the flowing folds of his robe.

“Oh—I. I did not see you there.”

He stuffed the image down and tried to focus, tried again not to think how Anakin’s hair had felt curling soft and loose in his hands, and failed.

Master Yoda looked up at him expectantly, clearly unsatisfied with the answer to his question.

“Yes.”

He did not feel inclined to share any more or less than that.

Yoda tapped over to him, step by shuffling step, and levitated very slowly up to stand on the railing of the rooftop. For a long time, neither of them said anything, simply watched the press and pull of ships against the scarlet sky.

Distanced from the Force as he was, Obi-Wan could still feel Yoda’s presence there beside him. Once the initial roil of emotion settled, he found the warm, light presence beside him comforting, a silent knowledge that some things did not change, could not be twisted. Wherever he might be lacking, whatever failings he might have, it was a comfort to know that other, better Jedi surrounded him, making up for—

“Stewing, stewing again you are.”

Obi-Wan opened his eyes to a rare, kind smile from the old master, the edges of the little green mouth turned up. Joking, the ancient being was _joking_ with him, and he should appreciate that. But the gentle jest irritated him more than perhaps it should have—should he _not_ stew over such a thing? To argue, though, would be to share, and he didn’t see how that would improve matters.

“I become ever more aware of my failings as time passes, Master,” he said aloud. It was the truth, in spirit if not in detail.

“Ah, so wise you have become. So many more failings than the rest, do you have? More than Master Windu? Master Alacarz?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Know this, do you? Seen it with your eyes?”

“Well. I suppose not.” He took a deep breath. There was nothing for it, then, he must tell someone before this got out of hand. “But I have—”

With a quick snap of Force energy, the grimer stick covered his mouth, suspended in thin air. Yoda had not even turned to look at him.

“Ah. Spare me. Nothing, there is, that you can say, that I have not heard worse before. Keep it.”

Opening his mouth and then closing it again, Obi-Wan considered the truth of this. The stick retreated slowly.

“We are meant to be guardians,” he said aloud, eyeing the twisted wood out of the corner of his eye.

“Righteous, you think this means?”

“Well. No. But in action, yes, I suppose. We are to serve.”

“Hmm. And committed unrighteous actions, have you?”

The yes was on his lips before he thought, but he paused, brow twisting, confused. He felt a padawan again, given one of Qui-Gon’s impossible puzzles. That was—not a fair question.

“No,” he said finally, the word stillborn in his mouth. “I have done nothing.”

“Hmm. Then only worry, you do.”

Silence fell over them again. Three times he thought of new objection, and three times he said nothing. Three times, he puzzled it out, turning each new thought over in the light of Yoda’s words before he spoke. Finally, he turned to speak to the old master once more—but the place where he had sat just moments ago was empty.

Obi-Wan stood alone on the roof for a long time after that, and when he left, it was to return to his quarters for a dreamless sleep.

\---

The worst of it, truly the worst of it, Obi-Wan reflected, was that he did not actually know how such an inappropriate advance might be received. Shame would suit the situation better; to feel a leper and a fool with a mad desire—better than this sneaking suspicion that he preferred to leave entirely unexplored.

Here in the safety of a meditation room, in the glaring heat of full daylight, he could acknowledge that. 

Anakin flitted to kindness like a moth to light, knowing where he was loved and staying there to bask in it as long as anyone would let him. He would never admit it, of course—the boy had always been difficult, and the man was only worse—but he had much affection to give, and thrived around those who returned it.

And Obi-Wan had loved him since they had been thrust together as Master and Padawan so many years ago. (The thought stung him, but he did not think he could have done any differently.) Who was to say Anakin did not also harbor such thoughts? Senator Amidala or not, she surely was too wise to entertain his foolishnesses for too long.

Who was to say, in fact, that Anakin was not the _source_ of the vision that plagued him so?

Or, truthfully, did not plague him nearly as much as it should have. He could not think of the moments in that dream without shame, but yet he brought every image up again and turned it like a gem in the light, fascinated as much as he was horrified.

Would that pink mouth taste as sweet as it looked? Would he fuck as thoroughly as he did everything else?

He recoiled from the thoughts. A bubble of fear rose in him, roiling, again, but he recalled Yoda’s words, and this time, let it pass over him. Through him, if the soft wave of the Force was anything to go by.

There is nothing new in the Jedi order. Nothing that can be done, or desired, that has not been done or desired before, he thought. And yet we are still here, still standing, still holding back the tides of darkness that threaten to overwhelm the galaxy. As they too have for millennia.

The pressing, roiling fear in him rose up, up to a peak, and then gradually washed down again.

Carefully, carefully, Obi-Wan relaxed. Clearing his mind, he waited, and sank into the vast unknowable expanse of the living Force.

\---

The vision unfolded again, in all the strange, twisting, ravenous desire that had ever haunted the crevices of his heart. Not the same vision, no, this one was different. If… thematically similar.

He saw everything, and did not look away: All of it, a hot, heart-pounding scene, as Anakin pulled the dream-Obi-Wan’s hair back until his back arched, until he gasped pink and wanton. Spit trickled from his bottom lip, drooling in a lingering line onto the bed. He watched silently, shot through with fear and lust and shame, as though seeing two strangers take their pleasure from one another.

Anakin took his old master’s jaw in both hands, and shoved his mouth where he wanted it. Watching, Obi-Wan felt a short, sharp stab of anxiety—not at the motion, but how his mirror-self panted for it, eager, shamelessly dropping to his knees. He watched his own throat pushed wide, saw Anakin’s eye glaze over, go glossy and pleased, and saw the furious thrust of his hips as he fucked his throat with complete focus and without mercy.

But he watched without averting his eyes, and unexpectedly, the twist of fear passed away soon enough. This was only a dream after all, and a man is made by the work of his hands. He need not fear this. He felt only desire, and a cool acknowledgement of that desire. With time, too, the shame slipped away; for nothing is shameful in the light of millennia. It simply is.

This is the nature of organic beings, he thought. What a thing, to be so human. He watched still, a little wistful, as the scene came to completion, and the two men he knew so well lay together, touching each other lazily in the aftermath. Such things would always be beyond him, he knew with a certainty bordering on sadness. If this was all he could ever have though—perhaps he could come to be glad of it.

After a long time, the vision faded, and he settled again into meditation.

\---

He opened his eyes. He felt a strange distance from his body, as if he had run a long distance, or climbed to a great height on an unfamiliar planet. Or had woken from some dream another man entirely.

But, no, there were his arms, legs, torso, his saber, his boots.

No longer some disembodied suggestion of a man, he rose, wrapped once again wholly in the Force. Weariness tugged at him, and he felt heavy, heavy with what he had seen, what he now knew. Heavier still was the knowledge that Anakin would soon return from the Outer Rim, and that he would be glad to see him again.

But those were all struggles for another hour. For now, he was tired. And yet, at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I read the prequel novelizations and this came to me unbidden. Don’t worry, I hate it too.


End file.
